Why do you want her? What does she have that I don’t? I didn’t say it. It wouldn’t be right. But I was thinking it so loudly I’m surprised that Lucas didn’t hear.
“I have an idea,” I said eventually.
“What’s that?” Lucas asked.
“I’ll just behave the same way that I would if you and I were really a couple.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m just going to ignore her from here on out. I’m sure that will drive her up the wall anyway.”
This conversation was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t want to disparage Victoria in front of Lucas, but I really didn’t want a thing to do with her. She was clearly a toxic individual.
Lucas laughed. “You’re definitely right about that. She’s going to hate being ignored.”
“Ok well that’s what I’m going to do unless you tell me otherwise.”
“I’m sorry I’m not good at this Rae. I don’t know what I’m doing either.”
“It’s fine.” I sighed. “We’re both just making this up as we go along.”
21
Rae
The Azure Group corporate headquarters occupies the top five floors of a modern steel and glass tower in a part of Manhattan where everyone wears black and looks busy. As I fidgeted with the stiff lapels of my blazer on the long elevator ride up, I found myself missing the unpretentious, casual, laid-back attitude of Austin. I didn’t see a single person wearing a suit last week. Just seeing someone taking a fashion risk on pinstripes or navy was uncommon here.
I made my reluctant way to my cubicle on the forty-seventh floor, dodging Stan from Finance. He clearly wanted to ask me 0ut for coffee again, but the answer was no. I’d only be going out of pity if I did. Last time he spent twenty minutes telling me about his snake, Dominic (an actual boa constrictor, mind you, not his dick).
Although I didn’t have any natural light at my desk, I managed to keep a small garden of succulents alive in a planter there. They didn’t mind not being watered when I was away, but I liked to think that they still missed me. I’d just watered them and started up my computer when Annie dropped by.
“Hi Rae,” she asked. “Can I talk to you really quickly?” Her voice was hesitant.
“Of course.” I tried to sound welcoming instead of Monday-grumpy. “What can I do for you?”
She took a seat in the open cube next to mine. “I’m having a lot of trouble with my report on the algorithms for Notable Match. I know Kyle is already finished with his financial report and you’re waiting on me.”
Although Annie and Kyle both reported to me, their expertise was much more focused than my own and I knew there was no way I could do their jobs. The three of us had always gotten along well, and it was disheartening to me that Kyle had caught me with Lucas. He probably thought I was a scheming slut. Annie’s expression, however, held no judgement or recrimination. Perhaps, despite the fact that Kyle and Annie were now an item, he hadn’t told her about our awkward interaction at Lucas’ loft? Was that even possible?
“What kind of trouble?” I asked.
Annie frowned. Her voice was even weaker than usual, and I had to strain to hear her. “It’s embarrassing to even admit it, but his logic is totally incomprehensible to me. It’s almost nonsensical. But somehow, despite the fact that I can’t figure out how he’s doing it, his matchmaking works.”
“It’s going to get really technical if you try to explain it more than that, won’t it?” I’d worked with Annie enough to know that I shouldn’t even try to understand what she did most of the time. As long as she created a report that passed muster with our technical team, that was good enough for me.
She nodded ruefully. “It’s almost like he used machine learning or something. There’s just no way to break down what he did to get his final product. I think the best way I can explain it would be that he wrote a set of instructions, used Google translate to put it in Ukrainian, then translated that into Chinese, and then back into English.”
I frowned. I wouldn’t put it past Lucas to think it was funny that his creation incomprehensible from the outside. He obviously liked complex puzzles, his loft was full of them. But I had a feeling that he didn’t do this just to make Annie’s life difficult, there would be no point. More likely, there was some key that Annie hadn’t yet managed to crack.
I thought about Annie’s problem for a minute before answering. “As long as you focus on the inputs and reliable outputs of the algorithm that should be good enough,” I told her. “While it would be nice to be able to say exactly how he created it, that may just not be possible.”
“Are you sure?” Annie had never delivered anything but the most detailed of technical reports, but she was an overachiever. Other technical analysts were not nearly as thorough.
“We’ve got the algorithms now, don’t we?”
“Yes, I have all the code. I just don’t know how it works.”
“Then yeah, I’m sure.” I shrugged. “It’s hardly going to matter anyway.”
Even an oblique reference to Lucas’ technology being locked away and never used made us both frown deeply.
“Did you get matched with Lucas?” Annie asked, and then looked like she regretted it. I guess it was too much to hope that Kyle wouldn’t tell her.
I nodded. “Yeah. I did.” It wasn’t worthwhile to lie to Annie. We were friends, at least as much as we could be in our line of work. Plus, it felt good to have someone to talk to.
“He stares at you every time you two are in the same room,” Annie said. “Then he looks away whenever you notice. It’s very cute.” She smiled at me encouragingly. I couldn’t return her smile.
He does? Well, it must just be because I look like Victoria.
Although, I really didn’t think that I looked like her at all. Victoria’s features were elfin, delicate, and sharp, while mine were softer and more rounded. Victoria’s eyes were green not blue. I had freckles and she didn’t. She was much taller than me. My hair was long, and hers was short. She had bangs, and I didn’t. We were both natural redheads, but that was about it.
“Its… complicated between us,” I told her. I wished I could tell her everything, but I could barely explain it to myself.
Still, her expression was sympathetic. “Yeah, you’ve got a hard job to do.”
I shook my head at her understatement. She didn’t know the half of it. “He’s going to hate me when he realizes what we’re going to do with his app,” I said, feeling horrible.
“You’re just doing your job,” Annie insisted.
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”
She smirked. “Because despite what Kyle thinks, you aren’t nearly as ruthless as you pretend to be.”
I arched an eyebrow at her and tried to look ruthless, but it just made her smirk turn into a disbelieving grin. I found myself fighting a smile as well.
“Fine, but don’t tell anyone my secret,” I told her. She mimed zipping her lips closed and throwing away the key. “I’m happy for you and Kyle,” I added.
Annie’s cheeks turned a deep, scarlet red. Her response was whispered. “He’s a really sweet, wonderful person. I’m so happy the app put us together. I don’t think we ever would have admitted how we felt otherwise.”
I shook my head at her in wonder. I still couldn’t believe they’d been into each other all this time and I hadn’t picked up on the slightest clue. “I guess it was fate.”
She returned my smile shyly. “We make our own fate,” she asserted a moment later, surprising me. “That’s what I’m learning. You never know what will happen, Rae, but you can decide how to deal with it. Like with Kyle and me. I never would have known he liked me, but once we learned the truth, we decided to take a risk and admit how we felt. This deal’s not over until the ink is dry. If you’re meant to be with Lucas, it will all work out. If Lucas’ app was meant to be out in the world, it will be.” She seemed completely sure.
When I got home to my apartment, it was long past dusk. I’d gone in before dawn, so the entire day had passed by without seeing the sun once. I made myself the only food I had in my pantry—macaroni and cheese—and settled on my couch.
God, it’s quiet in here.
At least when I’d had Tootsie, my dog, there had been someone here to greet me when I came home. I adored him and having him around always made me smile. Plus, he hunted the rats. Now it was just silent. I knew he was better off with my brother, though. Jarrod spoiled him rotten and gave him all the love he could stand.
Upstairs, someone turned on water and the ancient pipes made loud banging noises. It sounded like a family of ghosts were having a rave. In between the clanging, I could faintly hear my upstairs neighbor singing offkey.
Great. That’s not any better.
I needed to get out of this place. This apartment was expensive, and it still sucked. The only reason I’d chosen this building was that it was close to work.
Feeling increasingly grumpy, I turned on some mindless tv and tried to get out of my head. The first bite of the macaroni tasted pretty good, but by bite number three the fake powdered cheese taste was grossing me out. I stubbornly made myself eat the whole bowl.
Is this really what I want for the rest of my life? The thought had been rustling around in my head for a while before I was willing to acknowledge it. Once I did, however, it demanded an answer. I wished I had one.
22
Lucas
In the dream, Mickey held the knife straight ahead of him with his bizarre, four fingered hand. He ran after me relentlessly, laughing that awful high-pitched Mickey laugh the entire time. In the abandoned, empty warehouse there was nowhere for me to hide.
I was smaller in the dream. Actually, it wasn’t possible to tell if I was smaller than normal or if Mickey was just gigantic, but it felt like I was small. I was certainly too weak to fight him off. With nowhere to hide, and no hope of fighting, my only hope was to run. As always, the dream ended when I leapt off a building to avoid being stabbed in the heart.
My body was drenched in sweat. Moxie and Bob stared at me with matching expressions of confused betrayal on their little furry faces when I suddenly sat up out of sleep with a gasp. My heartbeat was racing like I’d just run a five-minute mile. Damnit. I hadn’t had that dream in almost a decade.
At eighteen, I’d been sure of my plans. I’d already aced every standardized test, made perfect grades in high school, and had my pick of the Ivy League. Instead, I chose to go to college at the University of Texas on a football scholarship. I knew where I’d go from there. First, I’d prove myself enough to replace the jerk that beat me out as quarterback. Then, after graduating with honors, I’d be drafted into the NFL. Next, I would play for a record-breaking fifteen years before retiring to a life of leisure and philanthropy. I’d write a bestselling memoir at forty-five before beginning a career in politics. By fifty-five, I’d be president.
It didn’t turn out quite like that. I’d made it to the University of Texas on a football scholarship and was on my way to displacing the quarterback, but a routine echocardiogram revealed a serious defect in the right ventricle of my heart. A potentially fatal, extraordinarily rare defect. The kind that kills you before you even know there’s a problem. All my dreams ground to a screeching halt.
I was benched from the team immediately, but that was the least of my worries. The heart murmur meant I was subjected to every test known to modern medicine. The poking and prodding went on for weeks, which turned to months, which dragged on into years. All the while I was wondering if I would even survive long enough for a transplant. Although I had no symptoms, I was told that I might drop dead at any moment.
It was during that period of unbearable uncertainty that the Mickey Mouse dreams started. I’d always found that damn cartoon mouse unsettling, but before the nightmares I’d not found him particularly sinister. Certainly not horrifying. The therapist that I saw during that period informed me the psychotic murder Mickey was a manifestation of my fears about my health, and I have no doubt that she was right. No eighteen-year-old boy, and yes, I was very much still a boy, should be forced to grapple with his own mortality. I did. And the way my subconscious dealt with it was by making me spend at least one night a week running for my life.
Maybe the most ironic thing about the dream was that I couldn’t run. As soon as my heart murmur was discovered, I was told that it wasn’t possible for me to continue with any strenuous aerobic activity. Instead of being an active, athletic, happy college freshman, I was an invalid. The fact that I lived with my former teammates, Cole and Ward, and both of them were goddamn football stars only drove home how broken I was.
Eventually, around the middle of my junior year, I learned the truth. My doctors were wrong. There was nothing wrong with my heart. There never had been. The murmur that they detected in my heartbeat was completely and utterly harmless.
Knowing that I was for sure going to survive did not immediately give me a new lease on life. Instead, I became extremely depressed. My grades, which had been flawless, dipped for the first time in my entire life. Murder Mickey, who I thought should have disappeared along with my diagnosis, appeared even more often. It was then, when I was at my life’s lowest nadir, not sure what I was going to do now that I wasn’t going to die, that I met Victoria.
The fact that murder Mickey had returned to me, now, after all these years, made no sense to me. Victoria had banished him in the first place. As I lay in my sweat-soaked bed, panting in the dark, the only explanation I could come up with was that I needed her back to banish him again. Clearly, I needed to recommit myself to winning Victoria back. Rae had been distracting me. My subconscious was warning me that my heart was at risk once again.
23
Lucas
Ward’s bachelor party was about as sedate and dull as any bachelor party could be. I’d been to more lively funerals. Cole wouldn’t let me plan anything. He was taking his best man thing extremely seriously. As a result, the party was doomed to lameness before it ever even began. Although the party barge on the lake was cool, a party can only be rightly called a party if there are women present. Otherwise it was just a sausage-fest.
“Are you planning on being a pain in the ass the entire time Lucas?” Cole asked me, dropping down in the deck chair next to me. “You haven’t even gotten in the water. You’re just sitting here sulking.”
“I’m not sulking. I’m enjoying this lovely evening,” I told him, waving a hand at the expansive view in front of us over the deck of the boat.
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying anything.” Cole’s dark eyes narrowed as he took me in. Although I was not the life of the party—that was Ward, even when the party wasn’t for him, I knew I was being more reserved than usual. I had a lot on my mind. And I wasn’t ready to confess it all to Cole. I wasn’t even ready to confess it all to myself.
“I’m really enjoying this beer. I’m working up to jumping in the water,” I told him, lifting my bottle as evidence. Cole raised an incredulous eyebrow and shook his head at me. There was a small graveyard of empties accumulating at my side. I’d been working up for a while now.
“What’s gotten into you lately?” His eyes examined me with skepticism. “You’ve been weird for the last few weeks. I mean, weirder than usual. Quiet. You’re never quiet. I don’t see you at the bar as much either.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been around.” I stared out at the calm, blue lake water and the watercolor sunset above. It was pretty, but I was sulking, despite what I’d told Cole. “How’re the dealerships?” I asked. “Do you still like your new vent
ure?”
Cole was adapting to life post-NFL. His professional football career probably could have lasted a bit longer, but too many head injuries convinced him that he’d rather have his health. He’d invested most of his money in a number of BMW dealerships in central Texas and was learning how to run them. Predictably, talking about business distracted him.
“I’m ridiculously busy, but that’s only the half of it. I also now know more about women’s underthings than I ever wanted to…” he trailed off with a thousand yard stare.
I smirked. “Does that mean Kate’s store is doing well?”
Cole’s girlfriend, Kate Williams, was Ward’s younger sister. She had recently quit the bar to open her own boutique. I’d not been to see it, as it was entirely devoted to women’s underwear. The name of Kate’s store? Teddy Bare. Because, of course it was.
Cole grinned proudly despite his trauma. “Yeah, she’s doing incredibly well.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m happy for her, but all those corsets and stuff need unpacking and stocking and somehow I keep getting conned into it. She just bats her big eyes at me and the next thing I know, I’m hanging up fancy panties and putting hang tags on them.”
Rae would look good in some fancy lingerie. Something white or maybe baby pink. She never wears light colors. It must be the New Yorker in her. The thought came out of nowhere and I shook my head to dispel it. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about her? I didn’t even want to think about her, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw her. The fact that we went a full week without seeing one another did nothing to help banish her from my thoughts. If anything, absence was actually making the heart grow fonder. I’d always thought that was a myth.
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